“You’re just trying to change the world!”

When I was growing up, teens uttered this like an insult. The implication was that I was airy-fairy, naïve, unrealistically optimistic and slightly irresponsible … because everybody knew that trying to affect the status quo was a waste of time and energy, energy that should be directed toward hard work, toward good old manual labor. Obviously, I was blinded by my rose-colored glasses.